Ascalon
Image source St. George’s Cathedral
Artist: Marcus Canning, Christian de Vietri
Asset Type: Sculpture
Year of Work: 2011
Location: St George’s Cathedral, Cathedral Square Precinct, Perth, WA.
Provenance: City of Perth
Description: Ascalon seeks to create a space of contemplation, exhilaration, and inspiration. It distils the essence of St George mythology in a contemporary, abstracted rendition that is timeless in its relevance, evoking the greater archetypal truths that permeate from his story and how these truths pertain to the individual and to society, now and for centuries to come.
In Medieval Romance, ‘Ascalon’ is the name of the lance used by St George to slay the dragon. Here, the lance is rendered as a monumental tube that emits a single beam of light into the heavens at night. It is set into a large fragmented landscape of black epoxy coated steel plate. An abstracted representation of the slain body of the dragon, this highly detailed and complexly faceted terrain has a crack running along its central axis that emanates from the point where the lance has entered the petrified, fossilised, and fragmented form of the dragon.
At night, light shines up through the crack, illuminating the luminous white form suspended above it.
The third element to the work is a billowing white cloak form that wraps and warps in a single undulating plane around the lance. It is cast in white epoxy coated hybrid composite, and despite its large dimensions, holds an ethereal lightness alongside its elemental power.
The form is an abstraction of St George on his steed and also references the recurring cloak form that features in many depictions of St George across Western art history, usually operating as a field similar to a halo or angel’s wings. The form aims to evoke a sense of righteous power and victory over a force of darkness and oppression.
The form of Ascalon has been developed and modelled in a digital environment in collaboration with New York-based architect Eldad Lev, allowing for a seamless ‘press play’ transition to fabrication using the latest in 3D printing and digitally controlled sculpting machinery.
Perth-based structural engineering firm Capital House, who were behind the Kings Park Suspension Bridge, are the project managers of the Ascalon fabrication and site build, and they have, amongst other things, designed a customised dampening system to tune the form to the specific wind conditions of the site.
